Elta Automotive

About Elta Automotive

ELTA Automotive is a major component importer and distributor based in the West Midlands and holds the UK licence for the Lucas Electrical brand. Established in 1993, Elta supplies around 2,000 motor factors and accessory shops from its central warehouse in Coleshill.

Before 2014 the company was using an accounting package with a bolt-on warehouse management module. According to Stuart Poole, Elta’s Product Analyst, the old system was slow and there was always a long journey to find what you wanted.

Stuart recommended K8 to his managing director because, as well as being a system that was fast and easy to use, he liked how KCS was a ‘one product’ company, committed to developing its core K8 solution. He was also reassured by KCS’s automotive heritage and how several large companies in the industry were already using it successfully.

The implementation of K8 starts with a ‘business discovery’ meeting to find out exactly how the user company operates. At Elta implementation took around six months during which time staff were trained to use the system and Stuart was responsible for the transfer of product, customer and supplier data. The system was configured to manage all Elta’s business processes and an interface was developed between K8 and TecCom - through which around 70% of Elta’s orders are placed.

K8 enabled our internal sales team to put orders on marginally quicker but it was with stock enquiries where we saw huge improvements once we were using a system that gave us complete visibility of the supply chain.

Now even when we don’t have something in stock, we can tell a customer when it’s due in. Instead of having customers waiting on the phone, we can give them accurate information straight away and that’s really improved our customer service levels

Stuart Poole - Product Analyst at Elta Automotive

Elta now uses K8 for forecasting. 'Kerridge Commercial Systems appointed a good project manager for us who clearly wanted to get it right. He set up a test system beforehand to allow users in each role to carry out a day’s work on the new version,' Stuart said.

'K8 shows our warehouse team exactly what stock we’ve got as well as the bin locations. The warehouse is fully barcoded and we use PDAs to make picking really quick. Pick and stock adjustment errors are minimal,' he continued.

Results

• There is now complete visibility of the supply chain
• Customer service is improved through fast, accurate responses to stock enquiries
• Pick and stock adjustment errors are now minimal
• Reversing costs when customers return products is easy
• K8 helps the Elta team work faster and more efficiently

According to Stuart, the management team are more than happy with the reporting within K8.

It’s so easy to get information out. I cherry pick lines to produce special versions of management accounts for the MD and it’s easy for the sales staff to produce customer spend reports.

Our warehouse team is always looking to improve efficiency and constantly review where things are, so they use K8 to produce reports that match prime picking locations with the fastest moving stock.

Stuart Poole - Product Analyst at Elta Automotive

K8 is a trading system with fully integrated financials. This means that up-to-the-minute sales figures, debtor position, cash, and stock values are always available for analysis by the Elta finance team. The system uses a single general ledger (GL) and posts all transactions from ‘front end’ processes as they are completed. 

Another useful function within K8 is how it gives you all the information you need to manage returns. 'If a customer returns a part it’s easy for us to quickly link back to the order and reverse the costs properly,' Sturat explained.

I know we made the right decision when we chose K8. We gained so much more functionality and now we work faster and much more efficiently.

Stuart Poole - Product Analyst at Elta Automotive